Mercury FX Fires Up Ripple's xRapid, Sends First XRP-Powered Payment to the Philippines

05-03-2019

Mercury FX, a global currency exchange provider with offices in London, Hong Kong and Cape Town, says it's new xRapid payment corridor to the Philippines is up and running.

The first payment using xRapid was just completed on behalf of a client in the UK who needed to send money across the world to pay for his honeymoon.

Mercury FX says it plans to open up as many as 10 new payment corridors using Ripple's XRP-based xRapid by the middle of this year, including routes to Canada and the Middle East.

In January, Mercury FX revealed the details of its largest xRapid commercial payment to date, saying it used xRapid to send a payment of $4,574 from the UK to Mexico. The payment executed in a matter of seconds, compared to the 31 hours it would normally take on traditional payment rails. The lower fees saved the company a total of $102.

At Ripple Regionals 2019 in London, Mercury FX CEO Alastair Constance said the company sees xRapid as an effective alternative to Swift.

"We did our first live commercial payments a couple of weeks ago. So we are now making payments for a UK corporate to Mexico to import Mexican food. And they are moving a lot faster than payments would go through Swift, at a much lower cost...

So when you're looking at high volume payments for companies involved in import/export or remittances or whatever the case may be, when you start to look at the economics of how they stack in favor of a Ripple payment over xRapid, perhaps over Swift, the numbers are actually quite eye-watering."